


Getting Lost In A World That I Can't Rewind

by WildandWhirling



Category: Cath Maige Tuired, Cath Maige Tuired Conga, Celtic Mythology, Irish Mythology
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Survivor Guilt, and in fact needs multiple, sreng needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25852393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildandWhirling/pseuds/WildandWhirling
Summary: “I was there last night. Again.”No more needed to be said, because it had been said a hundred times before, from their first nights together. Sreng had never been able to give Bres the peace he needed, because he had no inch of it himself.Sreng's sleep isn't always peaceful. Thankfully, Bres is there to help.
Relationships: Bres mac Elathan/Sreng mac Sengann
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Getting Lost In A World That I Can't Rewind

**Author's Note:**

> You ever think about how Sreng watched almost everyone he knew and loved die at one time? And then he had to take the throne immediately afterwards, so he had no time to grieve? Good! Because now you definitely will! 
> 
> Title comes from the song "Go Tonight" from the musical "The Mad Ones", which is the revised edition of the musical, "The Unauthorized Biography of Samantha Brown." 
> 
> This fic was written for the Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt "Survivor Guilt."

It was no longer a surprise when Sreng jerked up in the middle of the night, ears ringing with the clash of swords and spears. 

Though it was always somehow worse when Bres slept by his side. Bres’ stays with him were so fleeting, cut up into slivers of time that he could escape Elatha, and it was only then that they were really able to  _ sleep _ together. To cuddle and kiss and talk about whatever sprang to mind, for better or worse. (“Do you think Babgiter knows? When we’re eating roast pig? Do you think he looks and thinks ‘He killed and ate my mate?’ Do you think he’s planning revenge? Or do you think that he thinks that we’re just going to look at him one day and that’ll be it? I’d never kill him. I hope he knows that.” “Bres, I love you, but go the fuck to sleep.” “But does he? That’s settled, I’m never eating pig again.” “It’s not that hard, if you’ve never done it before.”) To wake up holding one another and being able to be blissfully lazy in the early hours of the morning before their duties pulled them elsewhere. 

And then his own battered brain ruined it.

“Hey,” came the moan from the other side of the bed, and he gave a long, deep breath in response, trying to calm himself into a false sense of normality.

“Hello, Bres.” 

“Hello yourself.” He stretched his limbs, looking at him with sleep-glazed eyes. Then, he sharpened as Sreng’s tone sunk into him. “Is everything alright?” 

Sreng forced a smile on his face. “I’m fine. Never better.”

Bres took Sreng’s face in his hands. “You sure about that?”

Sreng sighed, because some part of him, some childish part of him that he hadn’t smothered yet, wanted nothing better than to go to his lover and cry it out. But he couldn’t. He had to stay strong, for the both of them. “You need your sleep, love.”

Bres stroked along the care-worn lines on Sreng’s face. (He would not age, but that didn’t mean that years of stress and worry hadn’t left their mark.) “I won’t sleep if you don’t - You know how it goes.”

People could say whatever they wanted about Bres, and they did. He could hardly walk five feet without hearing opinions that he never cared to hear about the man that had become his world. But there was one thing that no one could take from him, and that was that, tribal loyalties aside, the man was  _ loyal _ . 

And stubborn. 

“I was there last night. Again.”

No more needed to be said, because it had been said a hundred times before, from their first nights together. Sreng had never been able to give Bres the peace he needed, because he had no inch of it himself. 

“Sreng, I-”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing.” It was strange, having someone who cared. Foreign. Tailtiu cared for him, Eochaid cared for him, his brothers cared for him, but it was never in a way that was without terms. 

_ “Fight our battles for us, Sreng, and we’ll love you” _

_ “Say the words we want you to say, and we’ll give you security” _

_ “Bury the past, lock it away, and we’ll let you live.”  _ _  
_ _ “Die for us, and you’ll be remembered.”  _

Bres, though…He  _ loved _ him. Loved him fiercely, recklessly, with the kind of love that could topple kingdoms. And he’d never understand why, just that, somehow, he woke up one day and there was the man that men and women alike had fantasized about in his bed, blonde hair gleaming in the faint morning light, and it still seemed surreal that it was  _ real _ . That Bres had  _ chosen _ him. (Hell, sometimes he still wondered if it wasn’t some sort of divine trick, making him think that he was going to be happy only to stab him in the back the second he got complacent.)

And that meant he deserved better than this. Bres had his own ghosts, there was no reason for him to be saddled with Sreng’s. 

“It’s not nothing.” Bres buried his face in Sreng’s back, absent-mindedly kissing it. “It’s affecting the man I love.” 

They remained like that, the weight of Bres’ face steady against his back, hands stroking along his arms. (The part of Sreng that could find some amount of humor wondered if Bres was just enjoying getting to feel his muscles.) Then, finally, Sreng spoke: 

“Sometimes, it’s like-like the past is an island, do you know what I mean, like? And I’m standing there on the shore, and if I just reach out far enough, or just...dive in and swim, I can touch it. I see them all so clearly, like they’re right in front of my eyes. My father, my mother, Fodbgen, Slainge, Eochaid. I  _ see _ them. Like they’re alive still. I can talk to them, I can change things, like. The past isn’t that far away, you know?” 

A single taste of salt on his tongue and he was in a great banquet hall, fighting for the Champion’s Portion, looking at Eochaid watching him with pride and feeling a sense of accomplishment for the first time. The sound of a dinner knife being sharpened, and he was in the middle of the battle (there was no need to say which -- there was only one battle, for him. Only one that mattered) and Slainge was dead and Eochaid was dead and his feet were betraying him, crying out as they slipped in the blood of friend and foe alike, and a sea of empty eyes stared at him. 

If he’d just fought harder with the nobles, if he’d been more convincing, if he’d known the right words…

He continued, his throat dry, “It doesn’t feel like something you shouldn’t be able to break through. It doesn’t feel right that you can remember someone that well and then not be able to see them again, like. For them to just be  _ gone _ . Which is stupid. Because I know they’re gone.” 

He didn’t know if he was making any sense, or if Bres was starting to wonder whether he’d tied himself to an insane person. 

It seemed so  _ close _ . Hazy, sometimes faded with memory and time, but  _ real _ . He should’ve been able to touch them, talk to them, because how could something that he remembered be gone? How could he never see them again?

And then it wasn’t. And then he was left alone, swimming and shivering in the furs that he wrapped himself in every night, feeling alone and so, so  _ stupid _ as he tried to explain what he felt to his lover.    
  
He shook his head, saying the words that he’d never fully had the stomach to say. “Why me, Eochu? Why not them?” He didn’t even notice that he’d slipped to Bres’ first name, as one more bit of armor fell away. 

They were all young enough, smart enough, capable enough. He wasn’t anything of note, a good champion, yes, but nothing  _ special _ . He wasn’t as capable and wise as Eochaid, or as charismatic as Slainge, or as passionate as Fodbgen. He was just  _ Sreng _ .

He’d come within a hair’s breadth of a sword more times than he could count. He’d been right by Slainge’s side as the battle had reached its killing frenzy. He’d been the son of a deposed king, anyone else would have killed him, killed him like they had his brother, but Eochaid had let him live. It felt like death was an old companion at this point, and yet, no matter what, it was only ever the ones around him who suffered. 

Never him. 

And he didn’t know why, what force had decided that he would live while ten thousand of the Fir Bolg’s best warriors died around him, why he would have to look in the faces of their families every day afterwards and go to bed with a man that they were never able to fully trust. 

  
Why, despite it all, he was allowed to be  _ happy _ , when they had lost that chance. 

He shouldn’t have been happy. He had no right to be happy that he’d lived, because that meant that he was happy that they’d died instead. 

Bres kissed upwards along his spine slowly. They were not demanding kisses, not like those from a few hours before (Bres was a king in exile, but a king nonetheless, and had no issues, as a rule, making his wants known), but easy, intimate, and Sreng could feel his body relaxing against him by pure instinct. Then, he landed on Sreng’s shoulder, propping his head on it. 

“Because-call it whatever you want, fate, the gods, the wind, the dew, the earth, the sea, the sky, the stars...it can be cruel. And there’s no answer, because sometimes things just happen, and if you tear yourself up trying to get an answer, then you surviving was for nothing.”

Sreng’s eyes stared at the crumpled wolf’s fur beneath them, marking every individual strand that he could make out in the dark room. No light shone through, so he had nothing else to focus on. “They would have done so much better.”

“ _ Not for me _ .” 

The words were decisive, possessive, fiercer than he was used to hearing from Bres, who was generally content to simply drape across him most of the time or use him as his own personal pillow. In that moment, he saw the passion, the fury that had driven Bres past such a point with the Tuatha Dé that no one knew where it would end up, but it didn’t burn him. Bres’ anger wasn’t devoted to Sreng, and he knew it, more to the idea that Sreng should have died instead, and if he had ever nursed a single doubt of Bres’ devotion, it was burned away. 

If Bres had become his world, if he had thrown himself into something dangerous, tenuous, and terrifying, then Bres had done the same. And if he was quieter about it at times, it didn’t mean that he felt it any less. 

Bres nuzzled into his neck. “You’re an amazing man, Sreng. You’re a damn good partner, and-and I’m not like you. I’m not good. I’m not noble. I’m just selfish enough to say that my world is much better for you having survived. The  _ children _ are better for you having survived. And, after all that happened, the Fir Bolg are better for it. They needed a leader, and you put aside your own pain to become that leader.” His voice softened, “If I could have been a tenth of the man you are, then I would still be in Ireland.” 

Then, before Sreng could make a single word of protest, Bres kissed his neck, telling him, in the nicest possible way, to drop it. “Tell me one thing: Do you think they’d be happy to see you miserable and guilty?” 

All the air escaped from Sreng’s lungs. “No.”    
  
Not even Eochaid would want that from him. Miserable kings make miserable rulers, he would probably have said. 

“Look, Sreng...I don’t know what to do or say. I want to see you happy, but I have my own ghosts from that day.” Sreng went cold at the memory of Bres’ body being broken beneath Eochaid’s sword, seeing him from the distance and not being able to do anything, because he was a good, loyal champion and it wasn’t his duty to show compassion. Bres shook his head against him, and Sreng could almost feel him grasping for words. “I-I  _ know _ it doesn’t go away. It might never go away. But...I love you. I love you and I want you to know that you’ve made so many people’s lives better for being in them, and you’ve done them all proud. So proud. And I know the love of an exiled king isn’t worth much, but-” 

Sreng turned to kiss him, and he hadn’t realized until his wet cheeks met Bres’ dry cheeks that he had been crying. “I love you.” He pulled Bres into a hug, taking pains not to crush him against his larger frame, then the other man’s touch enveloped him and  _ this _ is what he needed, warmth, closeness, the things that he didn’t know how to ask for because they’d never been options before. He didn’t dare let go, clinging to him with everything that he was worth, and Bres made no motion to pull away. “I love you so much.” 

It didn’t stop the guilt, but it dammed it, for a time, because, maybe, if he could at least make one man happy, if one man’s life was the better for him, then, well, perhaps it wasn’t for nothing after all. 

Maybe he wouldn’t do it like Eochaid or Fodbgen would. Maybe he wouldn’t be the king that they were. Maybe. 

But at least he would do what he could. For all of them. 

**Author's Note:**

> When Bres references his own ghosts during the battle, he's referring to (1) His own near-death experience, which is obviously where Sreng's mind is going to and (2) The death of his grandmother, Ernmas, who died during the battle, along with a few others. Not NEARLY the same extent as Sreng's, but enough to give him a solid helping of trauma of his own.


End file.
